While little can be said with certainty about Irish Christianity’s first few
centuries, Patrick’s concern and respect for women provide powerful
testimony about gender relations and female agency in the fifth century.
He acknowledged male ecclesiastical hierarchy outside of Ireland, but in
country his primary partners in the faith were female. His seventh-century
and subsequent biographers proclaim his dominance over virtually everything
and everyone in Ireland, but they allow us to hear echoes of women’s
voices and spheres of activity. Patrician texts, which serve primarily
male interests, attest to the wide range of possibilities for women in the
Irish church and proclaim women’s rights over both their property and
themselves, as they also show how those rights were negotiated within
the early Irish church.
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